I've been working on this horror movie project for school for a while now. The project itself is a bit of a mess, and has gone through any number of design and script changes, to the point that the first pictures I'm posting here are actually not related at all to what I'm doing now. But whatever, here they are anyway.

^Version 1, decided I wanted a much larger scale for this thing after all, so I made a few quick changes, see below:

The above were made for a script that was more sci-fi action than horror. The idea was to just shoot a "trailer" for the whole film, so we'd just make a bunch of neat-looking shots and forget about all the "boring" stuff in between.(This course is mostly about getting to do whatever visual work we want, so we've been pretty free to make the script according to the kinds of shots we'd like to have, as opposed to the other way around, as is usually the case.)

The script we're finally working on is completely different, but I found myself keeping some of the plainness of my previous work anyway. Here's a couple of sketches, they will need to be worked into full-blown mattes with animated snow, greenscreened actors etc. I built rough 3d models of each shot and decided on the exact camera angles with the cinematographer, because I intend to do most of the painting work before we even shoot, mainly because I have nothing else I can do for the next couple of months for this project, and there's other things to do after shooting. Having no real elements beyond the actors is probably going to bite me in the ass big-time, but...

Any comments are welcome. I think a big challenge for me will be to find a colour/tone balance that looks good and realistic, and making the ultra-soft lighting work. Have to find some good references for this, but I haven't found very many so far.

hey cool I really like the last three, reminds me of the original "the thing", Kurt russel lol. Maybe you will find inspiring elements in that movie though, I'm sure you have seen it.
Are you allowed to mention anything about the script?

Sure, I can tell you what the script is about, but it's mainly about having an excuse to build sets and costumes and shoot a few shots in them. Basically it's about a couple who, wandering in a deserted city, find refuge from the blizzard in a building only to be caught by lizardine cultists living in caves under the city and sacrificed to the cultists' amorphous, ancient monster god.

As I said, the script's only purpose is to give us a loose base to work off.

Sticking with the plain vanilla snowscape, I think it's better in this case for the whole film to keep the abnormality levels low in the first shots. I guess it's getting there, still some work to do, things to tighten up etc. I don't know if I'll bother going much further with the snow on the ground at this stage, since I'm going to have to blend that in with fake snow the actors walk on.

I've been gnawing away at this project slowly while doing other stuff, need to start putting more time into it now that the editing is done and we know what shots are used etc. A couple of updates, first the matte and then a rough test composite with some (crappy) particles and some footage of baking soda and salt blown around, shot against black, used for snow.

The one above needs a lot of work, the surfaces are too messy and distracting, the colours and shades somehow dirty.

I added the sign today, it's amazing how much realism some tight 3d forms add. Used a 3d model for perspective on the letters, but pretty much completely overpainted it.

Really awesome work on your project! I totaly like the environment and the light setting you have choosen (:
Have you seen "30 days 0f night"? Maybe that one could be good reference, I remember seeing that one and getting this urge to paint snow...